Consolidating your data center with the cloud

In the digital age, enterprise IT environments are increasing in complexity, with rapid and aggressive change commonplace across all industries. As enterprise technology evolves, it becomes increasingly vital to review and refresh existing infrastructure to ensure the business maintains competitive advantage.

To do this, enterprises are transitioning to hybrid IT strategies, combining on-premise and cloud technologies. By embracing the scalability, cost and agility of public cloud (hyperscale cloud) platforms such as AWS or Microsoft Azure, businesses are able to efficiently scale from a few servers to thousands of servers in an instant.

How data center strategy is shifting for enterprise

Gartner has suggested that by 2020, over 80% of businesses will have at least some applications hosted in the public cloud; with more compute power being sold by IaaS and PaaS cloud providers than sold and deployed into enterprise data centers. Most enterprises will continue to have on-premise data center capabilities, but a mixture of on-premise, private and public cloud environments is fast becoming the norm. IT leaders will increasingly adopt a data center as a service (DCaaS) model, where the role of IT and the data center is to deliver the right service, at the right pace, from the right provider, at the right price.

Indeed, we are seeing that organizations are moving as many applications as they can, away from legacy on-premise to hyperscale to enjoy the benefits of more cost-effective and agile cloud environments. In this move, it is imperative to get the right combination of technologies in place, working harmoniously together to deliver on the businesses’ goals and needs.

The drive for business agility and scalability in a digital first world makes hyperscale cloud a key component of the enterprise data center strategy. If something can be run easily, efficiently and at a more cost-competitive price, then it makes sense to do so, but it’s important that the right questions are asked and that they are answered properly. Does it make sense for the application to be moved to a hyperscale environment? Is it possible, is it cheaper and more efficient? What needs to be done to get there? In this hybrid environment, the right applications must be hosted in the most appropriate infrastructure, according to business priorities.

Hyperscale cloud and the future

As enterprises go through digital transformation to maintain advantage in an increasingly competitive global environment, hyperscale cloud will play a bigger role in the data center strategy. The advances in security of the public cloud has seen an increasing number of businesses place mission-critical applications in the public cloud. By relying on external expertise, for example from MSPs or consultants, businesses are increasingly safe in the knowledge that their data is secure, whether on-premise, private or hyperscale cloud.

Benefits of hyperscale cloud also include the fact that there is no need to worry about upfront capital costs for a test environment. If the project does not work, the business is not lumbered with additional data center kit sitting dormant. Additionally, the business can get going with hyperscale projects instantly – there is no wait for infrastructure to be installed, set up, connected to servers and configured. Hyperscale cloud will supplement tomorrow’s data center strategies and forward-thinking IT leaders should be planning for this new reality.

Case study: National Trust

National Trust, one of the largest landowners and charities in the UK, with revenues of more than £475 million and more than 4.6 million members, is one example of an organization that has already benefited from hyperscale cloud.

Working with Ensono, the National Trust seamlessly transitioned its entire website and new mobile platform to AWS. The transition was the largest and most ambitious technology transformation initiative in its history.

The goal of the £40 million program of works called the System Simplification Program (SSP) was to revolutionize how the Trust interacts with its customers.

“We’ve been able to maximize availability of the website while scaling the platform in line with seasons and events,” said Glen Yarwood, IT operations director at National Trust. “Using Ensono’s managed services for AWS provides automation and scripting which enables us to turn development environments off when not being used each day.”